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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Making a Magic Swirl Cane

Here's a goodie for using up some of your random fun scraps. I originally published this in my April newsletter. If you want to read the whole newsletter, the link is http://ymlp.com/zV9foZ. I'd love for you to post your canes or any projects you make from them on my Facebook Page!

1) Grab some piles of left over scrap clay in colors you want to blend. Make sure the piles are similar in size.

2) Chop up the different piles of scrap clay with a blade or in your food processor. If you make it too fine, you'll lose the details of the different shades, but this is a fun way to vary the look of the cane as well.

3) Stack the different piles of
chopped clay next to each other.

4) Chop up a bit of scrap black clay and divide it evenly between the piles. How fine you chop it will determine how fine the black accent streaks are in your cane. Mix the black bits into your piles and mix the piles very slightly between colors to blend them.

5) Roll and press your pile of chopped bits into a square. At this point I cut mine in half to make another cane (haven't decided which) and resquished the remaining half back into a square. It was about 3.5".

6) Run the slab of clay through the pasta machine on the thickest setting - from one color to the next as shown. You want to make sure you run it this way so that the colors run through the sheet as streaks of color. If you run it through from the edge with all colors, they will be just dots of color.

7) Take your sheet of clay and
divide into 3rds lengthwise. Stack your three long sheets.

8) Run a thin sheet of black through your pasta machine. I did this on a 5 setting when my machine goes from 1(largest) to 7(smallest). You can make it thinner or thicker depending on your taste. Stack your black sheet on one side of your colored sheet and trim the excess.

9) Roll your cane from either end - your choice - with the black toward the outside - i.e. the black will be laying against the table as you roll your cane up. Your cane is now finished! Reduce and enjoy!